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U.S. Spy Agencies–One-Stop Shop to Buy Your Personal Data

theintercept.com

51–60 of 74 posts

Re: U.S. Spy Agencies–One-Stop Shop to Buy Your Personal Data

#51
post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That is trivially true, but stop both-sides-ing it with false equivalency. At this point, the major party in power is doing all they can to undermine democracy and strip-mine the country for their own benefit and that of their few multi-billionaire sponsors. The other party is attempting to herd a broad coalition of people to maintain democracy. Yes, it is imperfect, and the country has fallen often far short of perf…

Is my reading of your comment accurate? If not please let us know. "The party not in power also has been doing similar things(in regards to the article) if not worse over the past couple of decades but lets completely ignore that, not criticize them at all, don't even bring it up and blame only the current admin because... "

I'm not the parent, but that seems like a pretty bad misread.

But to answer, you worry more about the guy waving a knife in your face than other people who have knives and may have waved them in your face in the past.

I'm curious what the worse one is. The Clipper Chip? Seems like a light pleasantry compared to what's happening now.

Re: U.S. Spy Agencies–One-Stop Shop to Buy Your Personal Data

#52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I'll happily stop both-sides-ing it when No, you unconditionally need to stop both-siding. When you want to bring a broader issue in the spotlight, do bring the broader issue in the spot light. But when you feel you are inclined to throw in a bothsidism, which is a negative sum contribution to discourse, then the chance that you actually have an insight on the broader issue is quite small. > Your guy lost, learn fr…

[flagged]

Disregarding the rest of the content, the poster has every right to do that!

Re: U.S. Spy Agencies–One-Stop Shop to Buy Your Personal Data

#53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I'll happily stop both-sides-ing it when No, you unconditionally need to stop both-siding. When you want to bring a broader issue in the spotlight, do bring the broader issue in the spot light. But when you feel you are inclined to throw in a bothsidism, which is a negative sum contribution to discourse, then the chance that you actually have an insight on the broader issue is quite small. > Your guy lost, learn fr…

[flagged]

Why would I hate Trump? He is a minor player. His role is to play the chaos actor, to divert attention. Just useful. For the people with real, material influence he is delivering.

The spell is broken if the press can stop wasting our mental bandwidth on the day to day distractions, and start to open themself to the big picture. And yes, doing a postmortem of how they got there is going to be an exercise in self-confrontation across the whole political spectrum.

Re: U.S. Spy Agencies–One-Stop Shop to Buy Your Personal Data

#54
post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That is trivially true, but stop both-sides-ing it with false equivalency. At this point, the major party in power is doing all they can to undermine democracy and strip-mine the country for their own benefit and that of their few multi-billionaire sponsors. The other party is attempting to herd a broad coalition of people to maintain democracy. Yes, it is imperfect, and the country has fallen often far short of perf…

I'll happily stop both-sides-ing it when people stop emphasizing "the current administration" when it's not relevant to the topic. Your guy lost, learn from your mistakes and carry on. Or criticize both presidents equally. If you criticized Biden in his tenure it was still Trump's fault. Believe me, I tried. It's Logical nonsense.

> Your guy lost, learn from your mistakes and carry on. Or criticize both presidents equally.

So, your solution here is for people who think the current administration is particularly bad to either not complain or accept any whataboutisms you have?

Your ‘both administrations’ quip is a vacuous justification for the current administration’s actions. If this is the basis for your justification, then, regardless of the truth of your claim, you’d be inconsistent to then praise this specific administration for anything positive. Thus, outside of nihilist generalizations about the overall structure of the US, you can’t meaningfully contribute to this conversation. Without giving a positive justification for the administrations behavior, your contributions are ‘logical nonsense.’

I’d rather simply complain about the doublespeakers in office at the moment and say it is wrong to do so, and there is no ‘logical nonsense’ in that.

Re: U.S. Spy Agencies–One-Stop Shop to Buy Your Personal Data

#55

Over 30y I've learned that surveillance overreach by Govs never stops or even slows down. Only reporting by the press does. I'm hoping that a historically overt, abusive administration will kick news orgs out of their default complacency - and that they'll take surveillance seriously again. For a time. That said, I am sympathetic that mental bandwidth is a real issue ATM.

"Flood the zone" => The specific strategy put forth and now enacted by the current US admin in order to overwhelm the media's ability to cover issues and therefore by extension the ability for the public at large to keep themselves informed. It's a fundamental attack on one of the pillars of democracy. Mental bandwidth saturation is a feature here, not a bug. Additionally, the gradual removal of personal privacy, and…

I’ve been wondering lately why they told us about “flood the zone” and published Project 2025. Is it because they don’t have regular communication with every person who is willing and able to employ these strategies, so they just communicate them in the open?

Re: U.S. Spy Agencies–One-Stop Shop to Buy Your Personal Data

#56
post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Flood the zone" => The specific strategy put forth and now enacted by the current US admin in order to overwhelm the media's ability to cover issues and therefore by extension the ability for the public at large to keep themselves informed. It's a fundamental attack on one of the pillars of democracy. Mental bandwidth saturation is a feature here, not a bug. Additionally, the gradual removal of personal privacy, and…

I’ve been wondering lately why they told us about “flood the zone” and published Project 2025. Is it because they don’t have regular communication with every person who is willing and able to employ these strategies, so they just communicate them in the open?

They’re used to openly saying what they are doing and expecting everyone to ignore it: https://www.nytimes.com/1997/02/27/business/job-insecurity-o...

Worked so far. But social media put everything up for scrutiny. The smart ones hide it. Trump doesn’t care cause no one will revolt with violence.

Re: U.S. Spy Agencies–One-Stop Shop to Buy Your Personal Data

#57
post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's never limited to a single administration.

That is trivially true, but stop both-sides-ing it with false equivalency. At this point, the major party in power is doing all they can to undermine democracy and strip-mine the country for their own benefit and that of their few multi-billionaire sponsors. The other party is attempting to herd a broad coalition of people to maintain democracy. Yes, it is imperfect, and the country has fallen often far short of perf…

My Dem senator from a “very blue state” described the US economy with decades of forced austerity and rising inequality as a model for the world and then Trump ruined our credibility.

Let that settle in; our credibility is was built on growing inequality. Decades of austerity being cheered on behind closed doors to leave a left wing senator believing austerity politics, gentle eugenics is a model for the world.

The problem is not the parties. It’s the people in power.

Re: U.S. Spy Agencies–One-Stop Shop to Buy Your Personal Data

#58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>It did it; for two generations. The GI's and the Silents were the most civic minded generations we ever had And the mass buy-in resulted in the building of systems, creating of institutions and setting of precedents that were and are being used less than civic purposes. So unfortunately I'm not sure that's sustainable either.

The fact that institutions can be corrupt (or corrupted) doesn't invalidate the concept of an institution. Humans must coordinate their efforts to have widespread impact, and institutions are the de-facto way to coordinate effort: from marriage, the nuclear family, and extended families to local clubs, churches, companies, non-profits, and governments at various levels. Ever since the counter-culture movement of the…

Institutions are not corrupt, people are. Corrupt people like to blame the problems onto institutions, that serves them well.

Re: U.S. Spy Agencies–One-Stop Shop to Buy Your Personal Data

#59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>It did it; for two generations. The GI's and the Silents were the most civic minded generations we ever had And the mass buy-in resulted in the building of systems, creating of institutions and setting of precedents that were and are being used less than civic purposes. So unfortunately I'm not sure that's sustainable either.

The fact that institutions can be corrupt (or corrupted) doesn't invalidate the concept of an institution. Humans must coordinate their efforts to have widespread impact, and institutions are the de-facto way to coordinate effort: from marriage, the nuclear family, and extended families to local clubs, churches, companies, non-profits, and governments at various levels. Ever since the counter-culture movement of the…

Institutions and organizations ought not to be architected in a manner that makes them useful to the corrupt. This is the defining failure of 20th century western governments. They were so "all in" and had so much public support they shape shifted themselves into these things that are magnets for the corrupt and self serving (and arguably tempt their leaders to become those things).

Re: U.S. Spy Agencies–One-Stop Shop to Buy Your Personal Data

#60
post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The media does plenty of shooting itself in their own feet though. There was tons of coverage of Jake Tapper's book taking time away from everything that is happening right now.

The book about how the media covered up the president's decline?

Tapper was like #1 in the coverup lmao
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